CR02

8/12/2019 CR02

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/cr02 1/9

This is an extract from:

The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World

© 2001 Dumbarton Oaks

Trustees for Harvard University

Washington, D.C.Printed in the United States of America

published by

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection

Washington, D.C.

www.doaks.org/etexts.html

edited by Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh

8/12/2019 CR02


The Idea of the Jiha d in Islam before the Crusades

Roy Parviz Mottahedeh and Ridwan al-Sayyid

The jiha d, often loosely translated as “holy war on behalf of Islam,” is usually understood

to be a fairly stable idea in Islamic law. In that standard reference book, The Encyclopaedia

of Islam, the very considerable scholar Emile Tyan tells us that the notion of jiha d stemsfrom the principle that Islam, “along with the temporal power which it implies, ought

to embrace the whole universe, if necessary by force.” Moreover, according to Tyan the

jiha d is “a religious duty” and “has a perpetual character.” Tyan mentions only one major

premodern figure of the Sunnı tradition, Sufyan al-Thawrı, who disagreed with this

view. Sufyan al-Thawrı, a thinker of the second/eighth century, regarded the jiha d as an

obligation only as a defensive war.1

In fact, diff erences about the status and nature of jiha d are a marked feature of early

Islamic law, and details about the conduct of jiha d continue to reflect historical circum-

stance throughout the history of Islamic law in the Middle East. It is important to re-

member that there is no authoritatively codified Islamic law before the nineteenth cen-tury .. Therefore, we have an accretional body of law (or more accurately, of legal

thinking) in which minority opinions are preserved and in which there may be more

than one widely held or “normative” position. This essay attempts to give some idea of

the divergence of opinion on the “universal” and “perpetual” nature of the jiha d in the

first Islamic century in Syria and the H. ijaz, the province of Western Arabia that contains

Mecca and Medina. It then tries to show how, in Iraq in the second half of the eighth

century, certain normative theories of jiha d were accepted which continued to have

widespread acceptance through and beyond the period of the Crusades. However, as

there are literally hundreds of legal books and other genres of literature that deal with

the jiha d in the centuries before the Crusades, well over half of which exist only in

manuscript, this essay in no way attempts to give a full survey of the normative theories

of jiha d in the pre-crusading period or to weigh the comparative importance of these

theories at diff erent periods.

We start with a review of the primary sources available to reconstruct the earliest

discussions of jiha d. The first half of the second Islamic century (which ends in 766 ..)

saw the emergence of two genres of writing about jiha d which either mixed history and

legal thought or attempted to set down rulings for war that relied upon historical prece-

1

E. Tyan, “Djihad,” EI

2

, 2:538–40. We wish to thank Michael Bonner, Fred Donner, and Hossein Modar-ressi for their very useful comments.

8/12/2019 CR02


[ 24 ] The Idea of the Jihad in Islam before the Crusades

dents. The first were the books on the military expeditions organized by the Prophet in

the Medinan period, and some of these books also included the military expeditions of

the early caliphs. The second were the books on the conduct of state, or siyar. The books

on military expeditions—most of which, unfortunately, are no longer extant—were

written by such important figures as al-Zuhrı (d. 124/741), ‘Urwah b. al-Zubayr (d. 94/

714), and Musa b. ‘Uqbah (d. 141/758). In fact, the late Martin Hinds suggests that

before Ibn Hisham (d. 213/828 or 218/833), all transmitters of biographical accounts of

the Prophet were primarily concerned with this genre, including Ibn Hisham’s primary

source, Ibn Ish. aq (d. 150/767), who is usually regarded as the first major biographer of

the Prophet.2 While the concern in this genre on military expeditions appears to be

historical, these works were undoubtedly also seen as sources for the Islamic rules of war,

as we understand from the advice of the jurist Malik b. Anas (d. 172/795) to his students

to refer to the magha zi, or accounts of exemplary early campaigns, by Musa b. ‘Uqbah

and not to those of Ibn Ish.

aq.Among the books on the conduct of state (siyar ) from the second Islamic century

there is a lost book by the very celebrated Syrian jurist al-Awza‘ı (d. 157/773), of which

parts are preserved in a refutation written by Abu Yusuf (d. 182/798)3 and long extracts

in the above-mentioned Ibn Ish. aq. There is also a lost book by Muhammad al-Nafs al-

Zakı yah (d. 145/762) of which many fragments survive in the writing of later Zaidi

authors.4 Another book of this genre is ascribed to the celebrated jurist Abu H. anıfah (d.

150/767), which we also know through the above-mentioned treatise of Abu Yusuf

refuting al-Awza‘ı. In fact, Abu Yusuf represents his own work as completing the

groundwork laid by Abu H. anıfah. A yet further work of this genre is the Siyar of Abu

Ish.

aq al-Fazarı (d. ca. 185/801), of which a section has been found in Morocco.5

Whilethis survey is far from complete, it shows that we know in fragmentary or, occasionally,

in full form literature of the second half of the century, much of which is in dialogue

with the opinions of authors or “authorities” of the early second century, the end of the

Umayyad period. These early surviving books on the conduct of state are united by two

concerns: first, their discussion of the virtues of jiha d; and, second, their discussion of

legal rulings related to jiha d, a subject that often occupies by far the largest part of such

texts.

At the end of the second half of the second Islamic century (which ends in 820 ..),

a new genre of writing on the legal aspects of war appears, namely, the books on the

khara j, or land tax, and on amwa l, the public finances of the Islamic community. Theearliest example of this genre appears to be a composition written by a vizier of the caliph

al-Mahdı (158/774–169/785).6 The earliest extant book is the well-known treatise on

khara j by a famous pupil of Abu H. anıfah who became supreme judge in the period of

the caliph Harun al-Rashıd, the Abu Yusuf mentioned above. Other such works of the

2 M. Hinds, “Al-Maghazı,” EI 2, 5:1161.3 Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub bin Ibrahım, Al-Radd ‘ala Siyar al-Awza ‘ı , ed. Abu l-Wafa’ al-Afghanı (Cairo, n.d.).4 These fragments have been gathered by Ridwan al-Sayyid and will be published in the near future.5

Al-Fazarı, Kita b al-Siyar, ed. F. Hamadah (Beirut, 1986).6 See A. Ben-Shemesh, Taxation in Islam (Leiden, 1969), 8–9.

8/12/2019 CR02


Roy Parviz Mottahedeh and Ridwan al-Sayyid [ 25 ]

third Islamic century were written by Yah. ya b. Adam (d. 821/206) and by Abu ‘Ubayd

al-Qasim b. Sallam (d. 224/838). This genre continued to exist for many centuries; and

the Kitab al-Istikhra j fi Ah.ka m al-Khara j by the H. anbali author Abu al-Faraj ‘Abd al-

Rah.man Ibn Rajab (d. 795/1392) is, perhaps, the last book of this type to achieve promi-

nence among Sunnı jurists in the Arab world.

It should be noted that after the appearance of books on the land tax and public fi-

nances, the books on the conduct of state and on the military expeditions of the Prophet

appear to dwindle. However, books specifically on the jiha d increased. These, by and

large, fall into two categories. One category consists of specific sections of the collec-

tions of Prophetic tradition, or separate books, on the “virtues of the jiha d.” The Kita b

al-Jiha d by ‘Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak al-Marwazı (d. 181/797) must surely be one of the

earliest examples of such individual books.7 Another category consists of the chapters on

jiha d in the law books.

This early literature raises many questions, only a few of which are addressed here.The view of Sufyan al-Thawrı (d. 161/778), who, as we mentioned above, believed that

only the defensive jiha d 8 was obligatory, is not as idiosyncratic as Tyan has led us to

believe. It has already been noted by Jacqueline Chabbi that there is some divergence

between the H. ijazı and the Syrian schools on this question. She points out that the

Muwat .t .a’, written by the Medinan Malik b. Anas (d. 179/795), seems in the version

compiled by al-Shaybanı (d. 189/804) to lack any endorsement of warfare on the frontier

in a context of jiha d. She concludes:

It is thus possible to suppose that in the mid second/eighth century, the Medinan

editor (or, at least, his H. anafı editor, a generation later) may have belonged to a

tendency which was skeptical about warfare on the frontier; particularly with regard

to the purity of the intentions of the fighters. . . . In the Cordovan recension (but

not that of al-Shaybanı) there is furthermore attributed to Malik the transmission

of a h.adı th, according to which the most scrupulous piety (ablutions, attendance at

the mosque, continued observance of prayer) would be the true riba t .. . . . This does

indeed seem to represent a position which would eff ectively have been professed

by Malik. . . . It may be wondered whether these traditions do not allow the suppo-

sition of a conflict of representation between traditionalists at the end of the sec-

ond/eighth century. These indications could permit the fixing of the time when

the ideology of jiha d, professed by circles yet to be identified, began to stress themeritorious aspect of military service on the frontier, while in other circles there

was manifest opposition to this new point of view (possibly from the people of

Arabia, i.e. of ‘Iraq . . .). If such was the case, it could be said that this conflict

would, as if symbolically, have divided those who, of quietist tendency, aspired to

make muja wara [“living close to the Ka‘ba”] . . . from those who aspired to make

riba t . (. . . “dwelling on the frontier”). This latter would have professed a new type

of activism.9

7 ‘Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak, Kita b al-Jiha d, ed. N. H. ammad (Beirut, 1977).8

Al-Sarakhsı, Sharh.

al-Siyar al-Kabı r, ed. S. al-Din al-Munajjid (Cairo, 1958), 1:187.9 J. Chabbi, “Ribat.,” EI 2, 8:495.

8/12/2019 CR02



There is a fair amount of evidence to support Chabbi’s hypothesis. Chabbi has already

noticed that Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889) tells us that al-Fud.ail b. ‘Iyad. (d. 187/863), who

died as a muja wir, told an anecdote unfavorable to the destiny of frontier warriors,10 and

al-Dhahabı confirms this account.11 In fact, Chabbi’s supposition that the very early

Malikı school, usually understood to express the majority opinion in the H. ijaz, did not

believe in the obligatory nature of certain kinds of aggressive war, seems borne out by

statements from Malik himself quoted in the extremely important foundational text of

Malikı law, al-Mudawwanah, compiled from Malik’s teachings by Sah.nun (d. 240/854).

These passages indicate that, in whatever circumstances Malik did approve of jiha d, he

was extremely cautious—even doubtful—about the legitimacy of a Muslim off ering his

services in border warfare led by the Syrian Umayyads, presumably because of questions

on the legitimacy of their rule. Malik is asked several times: Do you see any harm in

fighting the jiha d against the Byzantines alongside these rulers (wula t )? He repeatedly

says, “There is no harm in doing so,” twice justifying his stand by mentioning the Byzan-tine success at Mar‘ash (Germanikeia), presumably referring to its destruction by Con-

stantine V in 129/746. The implication of the passage is that for this major H. ijazı jurist,

fighting the jiha d with the Syrian Umayyads was in no sense a duty of a Muslim, only a

permissible act that was to some degree meritorious, especially because of the general

danger to Islamic territory.12

A neglected but extremely valuable source for this subject is al-Mus.annaf, a book com-

posed by ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-S.an‘anı (d. 211/826), which consists of materials he gath-

ered from his teachers in the H. ijaz and in Syria. An analysis of this material allows us to

understand how jiha d as obligatory aggressive war came to be the prevalent opinion in

the second half of the second/eighth century. ‘Abd al-Razzaq mentions a group of highlyrespected H. ijazı jurists in the circle of Ibn Jurayj (d. 150/762) who rejected the idea that

the jiha d was obligatory for all; and they seem, moreover, to have given primacy to other

religious acts.13

Yet the Syrian jurists quoted by ‘Abd al-Razzaq, perhaps reflecting the determination

to make progress on the Byzantine frontier in the first half of the second Islamic century,

were quite naturally attracted to the idea that aggressive war was obligatory. So in the

Mus.annaf we see that in Syrian circles pious stories circulated about the importance of

being a frontier warrior in Syria, and of warfare by sea as well as by land.14

A jurist of this period, the above-mentioned ‘Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak, was alarmed

by what he considered to be the bad conditions of the Muslims on the Syrian frontier and its critical points (thughu r ). He wrote, as already mentioned, a book on jiha d, and he

10 Ibid., 8:496.11 Al-Dhahabı, Siyar A‘la m al-Nubala ’ (Beirut, 1990), 8:421–22.12 Al-Mudawwanah (Cairo, 1326), 3:5. Michael Bonner suggests that the polemical tone in some verses as-

cribed to Fud.ail b. ‘Iyad. reflects their disagreement over this matter; see Ibn Taghribirdı , Al-Nuju m al-Z . a hirah

(Cairo, n.d.), 2:103–4.13 ‘Abd al-Razzaq, Al-Mus.annaf (Beirut, 1983), 5:171–72. It might be argued that the “pietist” jurists are

merely supporting the later normative view that jiha d is an obligation of the community as a whole and not of

individuals; but their tone and emphasis on other religious duties seem to make a further point. It should not,

however, be imagined that they in any way whatsoever opposed all jiha d.14 Ibid., 5:172–73.

8/12/2019 CR02



also devoted a section of his still extant book on asceticism to the jiha d, which he consid-

ered an ascetic practice.15 He was a Khurasanian from Marw who came to Syria to study

with the “jurist of Syria” par excellence, as al-Awza‘ı was called; and he supported al-

Awza‘ı in his dispute with the jurists of the H. ijaz about the virtues of jiha d. It should be

remembered that, because of the troubled internal state of the Islamic empire at the end

of the Umayyad period, the central government of the caliphate neglected the frontier.

It is in this context that al-Awza‘ı and ‘Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak wrote. Several of the

key jurists of the next generation, especially al-Shafi‘ı (d. 204/820), wrote on this subject

and proved to be in most respects followers of al-Awza‘ı and ‘Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak.

Hence the Syrian doctrine of jiha d was transformed into the normative doctrine of the

majority of Iraqis.

The more general acceptance of the Syrian school reached its peak in the thought of

al-Shafi‘ı, who elevates the destruction of unbelief to be the primary justification for

jiha d.16

Nevertheless, as we have seen, the opinions of the pre-Shafi‘ı jurists continued;at least up to the seventies of the second Islamic century, it is clear that some of the jurists

did not see jiha d as an individual or communal duty.

This essay considers jiha d and its justifications among early jurists. We have tried to

show that there is evidence that a belief in the defensive jiha d existed in the H. ijaz, more

especially in Medina, where at least an earlier generation had reason to resent the re-

moval of the capital from that city. Furthermore, even if they accepted an off ensive jiha d,

they had objections to participating in it if it were led by the Syrian Umayyads, who

were illegitimate leaders of the Muslims in the eyes of many H. ijazı jurists. Varieties of

this earlier H. ijazı attitude continue to reappear in Islamic thought when circumstances

favored it. For example, Rashıd al-Din Fad.

l Allah, the famous early fourteenth-centuryvizier to the Mongolian Ilkhanid government of the Middle East, argues that the so-

called verse of the sword (Qur’an IX:29) is specifically directed toward Arab polythe-

ists,17 a view in accord with much contemporary scholarship; for, as Tyan says, “accord-

ing to a view held by modern orientalist scholarship, Muhammad’s conception of the

jiha d as attack applied only in relation to the peoples of Arabia.”18

Yet this legal context must be related to wider contexts that have been suggested by

more recent studies of jiha d. First, it is now clear that in their earliest examples the siyars,

or books on the conduct of state, and magha zı , or literature on exemplary early cam-

paigns, were mixed. Only in their later examples, when law and history became more

distinct disciplines, did siyar and magha zı become distinct genres.19 Furthermore, in theprocess of the development of law, although there was probably a great deal of common

15 Kita b al-Zuhd wa-l-Raqa ’iq (Malegaon, 1966).16 M. Khadduri, The Islamic Law of Nations: Shaybani’s Siyar (Baltimore, 1966), “Translator’s Introduction,”

58. While Khadduri’s contention that Shafi‘ı was the “first” to formulate this doctrine that “the jiha d had for its

intent the waging of war on unbelievers for their disbelief” is open to doubt, Shafi‘ı’s stamp of approval for this

doctrine seems to have made this additional motivation for jiha d much more commonly accepted.17 D. Krawulsky, “Fı al-H. arakiyah al-Ta’rıkhı yah al-Idıulu jı yah li al-Jihad fi al-Islam,” Al-Ijtiha d 12 (1991):

127–31.18 Tyan, “Djihad,” 538.19

M. Bonner, “Some Observations Concerning the Early Development of Jihad on the Arab-ByzantineFrontier,” Studia Islamica 75 (1992): 5–31.

8/12/2019 CR02



ground in the very earliest period because of the close interaction of the original Muslim

community, local schools developed, and the diff erences of at least some members of the

early H. ijazı school with Syrian schools become apparent in this study. Nevertheless, in

this early period, as in later periods, the schools interact; and when a normative view

was formed in Iraq, “minority” opinions continued to be transmitted by the tradition.

Second, the gradual emergence of normative jiha d theory must also be seen as a func-

tion of the adjustment of the early Islamic world to an apocalypse that never conclusively

happened. Roman and Sassanian traditions of war already had established the idea of

victory as divine confirmation; and, given the apocalyptic atmosphere that pervades

much of the Qur’an, the early Islamic conquests seemed confirmation that Islam was

destined to create a universal state. Yet Constantinople and a significant part of the Byz-

antine Empire remained unconquerable. Muslim jurists became more interested in fiscal

problems—in particular the status of land—as determined by the earlier conquests. In

this way the genres on “land tax” and “state finances” came into existence and weremore cultivated than was the literature on campaigns, which passed into biographies and

histories, while the genre on “the conduct of state” became a relatively (though not

uniformly) static section of general law books. We believe, though it cannot be demon-

strated here, that the transition to a formal legal theory of war changed jiha d from a

theory primarily based on historical memories of the battles fought in the time of the

Prophet and the early Islamic period to a more precisely defined and normative theory

rooted in very specific events in the life of the Prophet and very specific interpretation

of Qur’anic verses. In the theory based on Qur’anic verses, an attempt was made to

organize the relevant verses in chronological order so that the so-called verse (or verses,

according to some) of the sword, which made war perpetual and a permanent obligationof the Islamic community, came last and therefore abrogated verses that could clearly

have allowed a diff erent development of the law. Incidentally, T. abarı, who opens his

work on The Divergences of the Jurists with a careful list of which Qur’anic verses supersede

which others, when he comes to the so-called verse of the sword in this Qur’anic com-

mentary gives no indication that it supersedes other verses.20

Third, as a state of relative equilibrium is established on the Byzantine frontier, the

concept of the “realm of Islam” and the “realm of war” comes into being, which recog-

nizes the temporary failure of the Islamic conquests to become universal. The division

is found as early as the first half of the second/eighth century in Muhammad al-Nafs az-

Zakı yah.21 The division appears by its nature to be more an expression of something that jurists had to deal with after it had occurred and not as an expression of what they

thought should happen.22 By the long reign of the Umayyad Caliph Hisham (105/724–

125/743), Muslim armies suff ered setbacks in Western Europe and Central Asia as well

20 T. abarı, Ikhtila f al-Fuqaha ’ (Cairo, 1933), 1–21, and Ja mi‘ al-Baya n ‘an Ta’wil al-Qur’a n (Cairo, 1968),

3:109–10.21 See Ridwan al-Sayyid’s forthcoming publication of his works.22 F. M. Donner, in his fundamentally important and innovative essay on the jiha d (“Sources of Islamic Con-

ceptions of War,” in Just War and Jihad, ed. J. M. Kelsay and J. T. Johnson [New York, 1991], 50 and n. 88, p.

67), dates the appearance of the two abodes to the late 2nd century

.

./late 8th century

.

., a point that hepromises to develop in a further publication.

8/12/2019 CR02



as on the Byzantine frontier. At the same time, the relative stabilization of the frontier

led to a truce and arrangements for furtherance of trade. By the time of al-Shafi‘ı a

juridical theory of a third abode, “the realm of treaty relations,” had emerged.23 These

juridical developments had become necessary to deal with a new situation and seem to

reflect rather than precede the appearance of this situation.

Fourth, jiha d had become an element of formalized piety, in part to keep alive the

momentum lost by the caliphate as an instrument of conquest and in part as an attempt

to “spiritualize” a deferred apocalyptic event. The Syrian tradition of al-Awza‘ı had seen

a continuous line of leaders from the Prophet through the Umayyads whose rule was

justified by their active expansion of the realm of Islam, thereby fulfilling injunctions

and prophecies of the earliest Islamic period. These leaders represent a continuous tradi-

tion of the uninterrupted practice of the Muslims, which in one view should be a major

basis for law. But the apocalypse had not come. In contrast to al-Awza‘ı, his equally

belligerent Khurasanian contemporary ‘Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak emphasized the spiri-tual discipline and merits of jiha d. Quotations directly from the Prophet take pride of

place in his work, and his interest in asceticism (on which he wrote a separate book) is

never far away. No wonder that, during the Second Crusade, Ibn ‘Asakir gave public

readings of ‘Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak’s Kita b al-Jiha d in Damascus, which inspired Abu

al-H. asan b. Munqidh, brother of the famous Usamah, to volunteer to help raise the siege

of Ascalon.24

While ‘Abd Allah b. al-Mubarak tried to integrate the role of government, society, and

the individual in jiha d, the subsequent propagation of a popular jiha d literature created a

strangely balanced problem for later Islamic leaders. The majority of jurists regarded

jiha d as lawful only if led by a legitimate Muslim ruler,25

in particular a legitimate caliph/imam, on whose exact identity fewer and fewer of the jurists were willing to pronounce

in any decisive way. Yet many military leaders exploited the image of jiha d in popular

piety by saying that they owed their legitimacy, at least in part, to their successful pursuit

of jiha d. At some point such a leader, if successful enough, might try to imply that he

was sanctioned by some caliph or even, either obliquely or directly, to imply that he was

a caliph. In this way he might win the overt support of some of the jurists. Jiha d had

become an unpredictable variable in the internal politics of Islamic lands just as it had

become in their relations with non-Islamic lands.

Harvard University andLebanese National University

23 H. Inalcık, “Dar al-‘Ahd,” EI 2, 2:116.24 E. Sivan, L’Islam et la Croisade (Paris, 1968), 75, cited in Bonner, “Some Observations,” 20.25 Donner, “Islamic Conceptions,” 41. Other important recent literature on jiha d in European languages in-

cludes P. Crone, “The First-Century Concept of Higra,” Arabica 41 (1994): 352–87; K. Yahya Blankinship,

The End of the Jihad State: The Reign of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik and the Collapse of the Umayyads (Albany, 1994);

M. Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and Holy War: Studies in the Jihad and the Arab Byzantine Frontier (New Haven,

Conn., 1996); A. Morabia, Le Gihad dans l’Islam me ´ die ´ val: Le “combat sacre ´ ” des origines au XIIe sie cle (Paris, 1993);

A. Noth, Heiliger Krieg und heiliger Kampf in Islam und Christentum (Bonn, 1966); and a forthcoming book byReuven Firestone.

8/12/2019 CR02


CR02

Documents

Transcript of CR02